Qualla: Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site

Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site: Introduction

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit NPS photo, Public domain. The guest list tells you everything. John James Audubon came to sketch birds. George Catlin and Karl Bodmer came to paint the Northern Plains tribes. Sitting Bull came to trade buffalo robes. Jim Bridger and Hugh Glass came because this was the center of the known world in the 1830s fur trade. Fort Union, built where the Yellowstone River empties into the Missouri just inside present-day North Dakota, was the headquarters of John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company and the busiest trading post on the upper Missouri for nearly forty years. Swiss artist Rudolf Kurz worked as post clerk in 1851 and left detailed drawings that archaeologists would later use to reconstruct what you see today.

Image: NPS photo | Public domain

Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site: Astor's Monopoly on the Frontier

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit NPS photo, Public domain. Kenneth McKenzie built Fort Union in 1828 or 1829 for the Upper Missouri Outfit, backed by John Jacob Astor's money and his near-total monopoly on the American fur trade. The location was strategic: two miles from where the Yellowstone joins the Missouri, close enough to the nort...

Image: NPS photo | Public domain

Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site: The Inventory of an Empire

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit NPS Photo, Public domain. Fort Union stocked everything the tribes wanted and the traders could profit from: manufactured glass beads, clay pipes, blankets, knives, cookware, cloth, firearms, and alcohol. Northern Plains peoples particularly favored the English-made North West Gun, a smooth-bore flintlock...

Image: NPS Photo | Public domain

Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site: When the River Ran Hostile

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. The fort operated in relative peace for decades, with conflicts between Euro-American traders and Native peoples less common here than clashes among the tribes themselves. That changed in the summer of 1863, following the Dakota Wars of 1862 in Minnesota. Tribes along the upper M...

Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site: Reconstruction of Memory

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Farragutful, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1961, the Department of Interior designated the site one of the earliest National Historic Landmarks in the United States. The National Park Service named it Fort Union Trading Post specifically to distinguish it from Fort Union National Monument, an Army post in New Mexico. W...

Image: Farragutful | CC BY-SA 4.0

Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site: The Rivers Still Meet

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit NPS Photo, Public domain. The confluence of the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers remains one of the great geographic landmarks of the Northern Plains. The trading post sat just two miles from where these waters merge, 25 miles from present-day Williston, North Dakota. For the Assiniboine, Crow, and Blackfo...

Image: NPS Photo | Public domain